


seven is for a secret never told

by Nagiru



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (Falls Again), (though mostly by the words "torture" than anything), (well more at the end of but yeah), (which is quite unhealthy), Gallifrey, Gen, Mid-S12E10 The Timeless Children, Sacrifices, Spoilers, The Master and the Doctor's relationship, for season 12 finale, mentions of torture, the timeless child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22980772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagiru/pseuds/Nagiru
Summary: Gallifrey lays in ruin around them, and the Doctor... can't quite think about it right now. Maybe some secrets really were supposed to never be shared.
Relationships: The Doctor & The Master (Doctor Who)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	seven is for a secret never told

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. Hello. If you didn't read the tags, please, read this: SPOILERS AHEAD. Starting here at the notes. Thanks.
> 
> So. That episode. That episode happened. I didn't quite believe it for the first... 10 minutes after finishing it, but it did. Holy _shit_.  
> ... then, another hour was gone and I had all these thoughts in my head and, well. This happened.  
> True to myself, this isn't a happy story. Isn't as sad as it could be, yeah, but... nearly there. Also pretty canon-compliant (I might've stopped a couple minutes before the end of the episode, but that aside...). So. Yeah. Shit happens. And my mind decided, as always, to get what was already there and make it... ah... more emotional. Somehow. So, you get some (barely worded) thoughts on the Doctor and the Master and Gallifrey. Because at the end of the episode I had TOO MANY thoughts on the latest destruction of Gallifrey and the Timeless Child and all the pain and destruction and that... bomb-thing-that-didn't, at the end. Yeah.
> 
> I...... need to warn you all that, maybe, just, y'know, perhaps... this isn't worded in a too comprehensive way. But I also wanted to post it, so. Uh. Have it like this. I might edit it tomorrow and see about reposting it, but I think not. Yeah.
> 
> Disclaimer, as required, is that Doctor Who isn't mine, because I certainly would've given more of a happy ending to the Master if it were.  
> (he's a psychopath, sure, but I love him. Even this one with all the unbound rage.)
> 
> OH YEAH. And neither is the song / nursery rhyme that I took the title of this story from!  
> (the song I was listening to is "Magpie" by The Unthanks. But it's also part of the nursery rhyme about magpies. I'll put it in the end notes, in case anyone is interested)
> 
> Oh yeah²: I use female pronouns for the Doctor and male pronouns for the Master, even when mentioning (vaguely) past reincarnations of them. Simply because that's how I imagined the Doctor thinking at the moment.

The streets they ran through. The hills they lied on. The sky they watched so fondly. The Academy they were always running from. The lake they liked to skip classes on.

Gallifrey. Their Gallifrey. The place they had grown on, the place they had met, the place they had experienced… _everything_.

And it was a lie. It was all… a lie.

So many memories she held close, so many things she had experienced and been moulded from.

And it was just a tiny bit fragment of her life, in the end. Just one more thing that… that’d likely be _erased_ , as well, if she hadn’t _run away_. If she hadn’t destroyed everything. If she hadn’t fixed everything and _kept away anyway_. If she had given them half an opportunity.

The place born and raised _from her_. The place created from the sacrifice of a small, innocent child. The race made from the suffering of an oddness that just wanted to _live_.

All the cruelties the Time Lords ever did… all the laws they had sprouted, as if they had the moral stand to make those judgements… All born from her veins. From the blood that had once separated her from everything in this universe.

Why… why had they done all of this. Why had they thought they could do that and then, then just… erase her. Erase her mind. Erase her _life_ …

But keep her around. Maybe they thought it would be a kindness, to erase all the torture and the cruelties and allow her life after. Maybe they thought she needed to be kept alive, in case something happened and they needed to fix it. Maybe they thought that the Patient Zero was something useful to retain, in case something went awry.

… maybe they were simply unable to off her, in the first place.

(could she die? could she actually, physically die? she had, in the past… and then regenerated. as it should happen. but would that happen… forever? was this… was this her fate for all of eternity? when she used to think that she had a limit to her lives, she’d thought that, at one point, she’d be able to die… to just lay down and…

but could she? _could she?_

or were all the deaths in her name… all the times someone died so _she could live_ … were they all in vain? was all of it just… more of the same pointless cruelty that had made her who she was, in the first place?)

He’d told her… he’d told her, back when he first revealed he’d destroyed Gallifrey… he’d _told her_. Told her she’d agree with him. Told her that the reason was _enough_ , this time around. She’d been so, _so_ sure it wouldn’t be. That it would _never_ be. That the guilt she’d felt back when she’d done it herself to stop a war, stop the destruction of the _universe_ , would remain true. That she’d be simply _disgusted_ by all of it.

… she didn’t know if she still agreed to it.

 _“Is it hurting, Doctor? I hope it’s hurting, because it really hurt me!”_ He’d hissed. He’d said he was hurt by coming from _her_ ; hurt by being _nothing, in the end, but a piece of her that made him_. He complained and raged about being nothing, about everything he was being undone because it didn’t matter, did it, because he wasn’t special, _she_ was, and he was just an experiment, just the remnants…

But underneath his words, underneath the rage and indignation, she’d heard. The same thing she’d heard every time he’d asked her to rule by his side, every time he’d offered her a _gift_ she would never accept.

_Pain. Hurt. The desire to be the same. The sense of being equals. The need to have her comprehend._

And rage, yes, but hurt rage… compassionate rage, even. Rage for more than just himself.

Rage for _her_.

He’d said before that they were the same. And he _was_ infuriated by being proved wrong, that they weren’t… but, more than that, he held that same anger he’d had when she called someone else her archenemy in front of him. The same anger he had whenever someone came close to killing her before him.

He was infuriated by his own origins… but he was also _so very_ angry about what had been done to _her_.

He said himself: she didn’t know her life. They’d stolen her _life_ from her. Stolen her past. Stolen her origins. Stolen her _choices_.

And he couldn’t bear that happening to him, and he certainly couldn’t bear that happening to what was _his_.

It wasn’t healthy — but the two of them never had been. The two of them were so much more than just friends and enemies or even lovers, and… and it showed. It showed, whenever they met.

It showed, when one of them was _hurt_.

He’d destroyed Gallifrey for the lies, he’d destroyed Gallifrey for the hurt, he’d destroyed Gallifrey for making his life a pointless waste of time.

He’d destroyed Gallifrey so she wouldn’t have to. _Again_.

He’d told her she’d want to destroy it, too, when she discovered the truth. Said that she would _hurt_ and that he wanted her to _earn it_ , this knowledge.

Wanted to be _there_ when she discovered, because then she’d understand.

And… she did. Understand. Hurt. Wish to… to raze everything to the ground.

Not for herself, exactly. Also, of course. Even her could feel angry enough for _herself_ , sometimes.

But… mainly… she wanted to destroy them for what they did to that innocent child. The child that might be her, perhaps, but that she couldn’t remember being… the child that had been _tortured_ for years, for _so many lives_ , just to produce a _masterpiece_ , to create something they’d be _proud of_ , even if it cost the child… _everything_.

She saw the girl that she may once have been, and she wanted to deliver the same pain she suffered to them. To those who were responsible for it.

And she wanted to make them _pay_ for what they’d done to the Master. To her Koschei.

Because he was always so possessively angry for her… of her… and she, she was always so possessively _protective_ of him. She’d beat him, always, gladly… but he was _hers_. He was the first (not-first because it _wasn’t-her-first-life, because they’d stolen-her-life-from-her!!!_ ) friend, he was the first person she’d considered an equal, and…

And he was hers. Her to protect. Hers to beat. Hers to kill. Hers to kill her.

And destroying him…

That was unacceptable.

… but so was destroying the universe.

Destroying Gallifrey was… was something. Wrong. Hurtful. _So right._

But destroying the universe… experimenting on the dead to destroy _everything_ …

That was too much.

(too much pain and destruction in her name, too many deaths she’d never be able to live with, too much like the same people who’d _destroyed them both_ and an innocent child also)

Destroying Gallifrey, she could get behind. She’d be angry with him for some time yet, she knew, but she also felt in her hearts the _truth_ of his statements, of his anger, of his knowledge that _she would’ve done the same_.

Destroying innocents… not so much.

And, in the end, that won. It was only fair. They’d destroyed this world (and she knew she had her part, even if she’d fixed it last time) for their torture of innocents, for playing god with lives that weren’t theirs to play with… It was only fair that they finished this here, in the same place the whole lie was born.

The streets they ran through. The hills they lied on. The sky they watched so fondly. The Academy they were always running from. The lake they liked to skip classes on.

The love and happiness and fondness and _dreams_ , all laid to the ground and turned into ashes, all destroyed by the lies and broken innocence and so much _pain_ and _anger_ and _righteous justice_.

The lie was born here. The secrets, the lives, the truth buried here, in these walls, in these floors, _in them_.

It should definitely get its rest here, as well. In these walls, in these floors, in them. The secrets, the lives, the unwanted truths. Put to rest at last.

If she went with him, she supposed… she supposed it wasn’t too bad.

… if only there was a way to end all of this without… without sacrificing…

_Him._

(she’d started all of this. she'd been the one to destroy everything. she'd been the one to give birth to all of the pain and wrong in this world. it was only fair she ended here.

him, on the other hand… he was the one thing that’d apparently been born from her that she _didn’t_ want to lose.

not even if she were going with.)

**Author's Note:**

>  **Nursery rhyme:**  
>  One for sorrow, / Two for joy, / Three for a girl, / Four for a boy, / Five for silver / Six for gold, / Seven for a secret, / Never to be told. / Eight for a wish, / Nine for a kiss, / Ten for a bird, / You must not miss.
> 
> Well. So. Thanks for anyone who've read (the ramblings that here you find, really)! If anyone wants to comment the episode, I'm always happy to answer comments, and, well, I don't think I'll run out of opinions on this episode too soon...


End file.
